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The Year 2006 in Review

The World's Best Players

Chess news in the year 2006 was dominated by a World Championship unification match. Along with typical news about top class GM tournaments, an Olympiad, a FIDE Presidential election, and a top class man-machine match, there were several human interest stories like Gormallygate. Reports that some players were using computers to cheat generated a wave of interest from the general news media. As in our previous year end reviews, we owe a big debt to Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess (see the link on the right) and his global network of correspondents. If a chess story isn't reported by Crowther, it's not news. Let's start by listing the world's top players, as calculated quarterly by FIDE. World's Top-10 (FIDE) 2006 Name NAT Born : Jan No : Apr No : Jul No : Oct No Topalov, Veselin BUL 1975 : 2801 2 : 2804 1 : 2813 1 : 2813 1 Anand, Viswanathan IND 1969 : 2792 3 : 2803 2 : 2779 2 : 2779 2 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 1975 : 2741 6 : 2729 8 : 2743 4 : 2750 3 Svidler, Peter RUS 1976 : 2765 4 : 2743 4 : 2742 5 : 2750 4 Morozevich, Alexander RUS 1977 : : 2730 7 : 2731 9 : 2747 5 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 1969 : 2729 8 : 2723 10 : 2734 7 : 2741 6 Aronian, Levon ARM 1982 : 2752 5 : 2756 3 : 2761 3 : 2741 7 Leko, Peter HUN 1979 : 2740 7 : 2738 5 : 2738 6 : 2741 8 Adams, Michael ENG 1971 : : : 2732 8 : 2735 9 Gelfand, Boris ISR 1968 : 2723 9 : 2727 9 : 2729 10 : 2733 10 Kasparov, Garry RUS 1963 : 2812 1 : : : Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR 1983 : 2723 10 : 2738 6 : : Although no new names appeared in the world top-10 during 2006, an old name failed to appear for the first time in more than 20 years. One year after Garry Kasparov's retirement from professional chess, he was dropped from the list by FIDE. This is standard FIDE practice for players who have been inactive for more than a year. The 2005 Chess Oscar was awarded to Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, the first time that Topalov received the prize. He scored 4376 points and received 293 first place votes on 361 lists from 68 countries. Second in the voting was Viswanathan Anand of India (3495 points, 31 first). Third was Levon Aronian of Armenia (2721, 10). Next : World Championship 2006

More of this Feature • The Best Players • World Championship • International Events • National Championships • Opens • Computers • Passages  Related Resources • The Best Players 2005  Elsewhere on the Web • The Week in Chess